Trusted humans vs algorithms

“We couldn’t agree more (the part about the ‘human touch’ adding a lot of value). Algorithms are fast and can cover a lot more ground than individual human, but they lack a fundamental human gift — judgment.”

This is true… at the moment. Of course, it’s widely believed that Google is doing plenty of research into artificial intelligence, which would provide the “judgement”.

“Of course, human judgment is what powers Google PageRank, via human link patterns, but the judgment is implicit, rather than explicit, as it is in the model that Digg, Del.icio.us Popular, and Reddit pioneered. When you network a large group of trusted, skilled humans — and the network effect kicks in — suddenly you can cover a lot of ground.”